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Different bacterial host-based lux reporter array for fast identification and toxicity indication of multiple metal ions

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Abstract

Although luminescent bacteria-based bioluminescence inhibition assay has been widely used in the toxicity assessment of environmental pollutants, the response of a luminescent bacterium usually lacks specificity to a target analyte. Recently, some specific analyte inductive promoters were fused to the lux genes for the purpose of selective bioluminescent sensing, and suits of specific promoters were fused to lux genes to compose a bioluminescent array sensor for simultaneous identification of multiple analytes. However, specific promoter-based methods still suffer from drawbacks including limited selectivity, slow responding time, expensive to construct different promoters involved plasmids, and laborious to find new promoters. Herein, we proposed a novel strategy to construct a lux reporter array sensor by directly transforming the natural lux genes in different bacterial hosts without the involvement of any specific promoters. Due to the distinct pathways of signal production, the responding time of the current different bacterial host (DBH)-based lux reporter array has nearly an order of magnitude faster than with specific promoter-based methods. The DBH-based lux reporter array was successfully used for simultaneous identification, quantification, and toxicity/bioactivity assessment of multiple metal ions. Obviously, all the chemical synthetic material-based metal ion sensing methods cannot simultaneously achieve analysis and toxicity evaluation. This approach possessed additional advantages of facile construction, easy operation, high selectivity, fast response, and strong adaptability to other analytes.

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A different bacterial host-based lux reporter array was established for simultaneous analysis and toxicity assessment of multiple metal ions.

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Funding

Financial support was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21675016), the 100 Young Plan by Chongqing University (No. 0236011104410), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2019CDQYYX018), and the Chongqing Research and Frontier Technology (No. cstc2018jcyjAX0517).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 401331, China

    Yuchen Su, Chunlan Liu & Weili Wei

  2. Bioengineering College, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China

    Xuemei Jiang

Authors
  1. Yuchen Su
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  2. Chunlan Liu
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  3. Xuemei Jiang
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  4. Weili Wei
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Correspondence to Weili Wei.

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Su, Y., Liu, C., Jiang, X. et al. Different bacterial host-based lux reporter array for fast identification and toxicity indication of multiple metal ions. Anal Bioanal Chem 412, 8127–8134 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-02943-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-02943-8

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